Posts Tagged ‘babies’

Imagine giving birth to a 20-year-old. Sure, it lets you avoid changing diapers and those trying teenage years, but imagine the labor pains! My middle child was so big that she got stuck on the way out; my youngest was even bigger. Luckily for the 42-year-old mother, however, the 20-year-old baby boy she gave birth to was apparently of normal size. But how, you ask, could a woman give birth to a 20-year-old, baby-sized or otherwise?

When you look at your kids, do you ever wonder whether or not they’re real? Are they real children or just elaborate fakes, cheap imitations of the real thing, shadows of that which they pretend to be? That’s the question Cathy Lynn Grossman, writing in USA Today’s Faith and Reason section, posed regarding children conceived via in vitro fertilisation. Her query was prompted by the news that the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to Robert Edwards, the British scientist who pioneered the process in 1977. “Do you think,” she asks, “a baby conceived in [a] test tube is still a child in the eyes of God?”

There has been quite the campaign to promote breastfeeding as the best option for newborns and I fully support it. My wife breastfed all three of our children for more than a year each — no small feat for a woman working fulltime or more and certainly more than most American mothers do. On the other hand, I certainly understand when a woman — for whatever reason — is unable to breastfeed. Certainly, “Breast is Best” but that’s not always possible. But what about when a woman is perfectly capable of breastfeeding but chooses not to?